Fat reduction, while retaining appropriate and known organoleptic properties, is a challenge in most foods. Fat reduction in cookie cream fillings have shown special difficulties. Fat reduction in cookie cream fillings is complicated, heretofore, and has been only marginally successful. Definitely, there is a need for fat free/low fat cookie cream fillings for sandwich cookies that possess similar organoleptic properties to traditional full fat cookie cream filling counterparts.
Fat is included in cookie cream fillings to control texture and spreadability. Typical cookie cream fillings contain 30-35% fat. Up to 60% fat has been used where special effects are desired. When fat level is lowered, the fillings get harder and don't adhere together well. On the other hand, if the percentage of fat is excessive, the fillings flow too freely and squeeze out of the cookie. Also, the filling must be firm at room temperature and below so that the cookie wafers don't slide when eaten.
There are many attributes to fat in food systems; just as there are many different fats used with different structures and characteristics. Texture and mouthfeel are important and simply removing the fat, adding water and tying up the expanded water phase works in some foods, but not in major categories of food. The presence of water in cookie cream fillings would lead to serious problems in cookie shelf life. The presence of water in cookie cream fillings would increase the water activity to levels higher than the full fat cookies (typical full fat cookie cream filling water activity is 0.2-0.3) causing them to become soggy and lose crunchiness. Cookie cream fillings with high water activities (higher than 4.0), would allow water to migrate into the cookie wafers. Since the cookie wafers have significantly lower water activity, the migration of moisture into the cookie wafers makes them soggy with lack of crispy and crunchy texture.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,455,059 to McFeaters discloses fat free cookie fillings containing 20-22% water. The filling has a high range of water activity of 0.65-0.70. It is shelf stable by itself, but much higher in water activity than the cookie wafers that it is used to fill. The results would be a filled cookie with unstable shelf life.
Heretofore, conventional cookie cream fillings have generally contained relatively high levels of triglyceride fat in the form of oil and/or shortening in order to be able to provide the desired shelf stability, spreadability and organoleptic properties. As used herein, the term "fat" is intended to mean triglyceride materials but does not include non-triglyceride materials that analyze as fat such as mono and diglycerides based emulsifiers. It would be desirable to be able to provide cookie cream fillings having a lower fat content, and most desirably, cookie cream fillings containing essentially no fat.
It would be desirable to provide a fat replacement composition which when incorporated into cookie cream fillings as a replacement for fat, results in an essentially fat free cookie cream filling that is equivalent to shortening containing low fat cookie cream fillings. Cookie cream fillings have an additional requirement of needing a low water activity of less than about 0.37. If the water activity is above about 0.37, water migration from the cookie cream filling to the cookie wafer will occur.
Inulin has been proposed as a fat replacement or substitute in a wide variety of food products and applications. Inulin is a non-crystalline, fibrous solid polysaccharide or mixture of polysaccharides containing beta-1,2 bonded glucofructan polymers of varying molecular weights terminated at the reducing end by a glucose ring. Thus, inulin is a series of repeating 5-member fructose rings terminated by a 6-member glucose ring. Inulin may be represented by the formula GF.sub.n where G is a glucose ring, F is a fructose ring and .sub.n is the number of fructose rings. Inulin may be derived from various plant tubers, such as dahlia, sunchoke flower, jerusalem artichokes and chicory. Commercially available inulin is generally obtained by water extraction from chicory and is available in several degrees of polymerization (DP), generally between 2 to 15. The average value of .sub.n is generally in the range of from about 8 to about 13 depending upon the extraction processing conditions and in most instances, inulin of the general formula GF.sub.n is non-digestible when the .sub.n value is greater than about 2.
Inulin is available commercially from Cosucra under the tradename FIBRULINE and from Rhodia under the tradename RAFTILINE in the form of a free flowing spray dried powder or agglomerate. Inulin acts as a gelling agent when dispersed and hydrated in water. Attempts to directly incorporate commercially available inulin as a replacement for fat in cookie cream fillings were not successful in that it was difficult to fully hydrate the inulin with the result that the cookie filling had an undesirable sandy or gritty texture or mouthfeel rather than the creamy mouthfeel of homemade cookie fillings. The cookie cream filling also had a runny consistency of too low viscosity to properly cling to the surface of the cookie. Further, the cookie cream filling had a stringy texture that was not easily spreadable. Although after standing one or two days, the inulin containing cookie cream filling gelled sufficiently to provide some spreadability, inability to produce an immediately spreadable cookie filling with good texture and mouthfeel caused inulin to initially be deemed to be an unacceptable fat substitute for cookie cream fillings.